The flag of the 6th NC, lost at Sailor’s Creek in 1865 has been restored (at the tune of $6500) and is now on display at the NC Museum of History.
More than 100 people from across the state came to the dedication Saturday to see the flag and share stories about the N.C. 6th Regiment, which formed in Charlotte in May 1861 and fought its first major battle two months later in Manassas, Va., also known as the First Battle of Bull Run.
“It was the only North Carolina battalion at that first great battle of the war,” said Rick Walton, a Civil War historian and member the Cedar Fork Rifles Preservation Society.
Known as “the bloody 6th,” the regiment fought constantly during the war and at many famous battle sites in throughout Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina: Yorktown, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, New Bern, Plymouth, Petersburg and others. Starting out with 1,000 members, the ranks were diminished by injuries and deaths after years of fighting. Replacements were brought in whenever possible, Marshall said.
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